What Defines a Community Manager?

A community manager is the liaison between the community and the company. He/she builds relationships within the community and creates value for members. 

A community manager must care about, understand & represent a business effectively on social media.

Writing skills, insatiable curiosity, attention to details and creativity are important requirements.

Based on my experience in community management and transmedia storytelling, I have a slightly different take on what defines a community manager. They... 

1. understand media theory
2. good creative writers
3. make the best content marketers
4. have extremely social personalities and love to talk (social beasts)
5. are good at selling (brand ambassadors)
6. aware of the latest trends on online advertising
7. adapt quickly to new online tools
8. test new online platforms and beta testers
9. Constantly up to date with the latest reputation management strategies
10. try to stay up to date with SEO/SEM practices
11. are great at live-tweeting and rapid instagram-ming
12. actively particiapate in meetups to promote their brand
13. are the best advocates of personal branding
14. are active bloggers
15. love picking out fallacies in mainstream media, yet give constructive criticism about competitiors
16. make good activists or slacktivists
17. should participate at innovations
18. may enjoy videography
19. are good with DSLR photography
20. know their way around Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
21. understand inbound marketing
22. have experience designing newsletters and ebooks (InDesign)
23. are proficient in Microsoft Office
24. are advocates of BYOD (bring your own device) at the workplace
25. like to critic content online via content curation and aggregation
26. are adventurous and risk takers
27. like to experiment with new digital marketing practices.

A good community manager personifies the brand through a personal tone of voice and represents it as per the brand guidelines.

They should also be great listeners to the community and help them engage with each other as well as with the brand.